HM Prison Wakefield

The exercise yard at Wakefield had a mulberry tree, around which female inmates used to exercise. This has been linked to the nursery rhyme "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush" by the erstwhile prison governor, RS Duncan in his book 'Here we go round the mulberry bush': The House of Correction 1595 / HM Prison Wakefield 1995 (published by author 1994).[5] This origin of the song is also propounded on the prison's website. There is no corroborative evidence to support this theory. The tree was removed in May 2019 as it had died. A cutting from it was taken by a retired prison officer. This will be used in an attempt to grow the tree again.

During the First World War, Wakefield Prison was used as a Home Office work camp. The ordinary criminal prisoners were removed, and the new influx were sentenced to two or more years' imprisonment for refusing to obey military orders.[6] After the closure of Dyce Work Camp in October 1916, Wakefield Prison was also used to intern conscientious objectors.[7] In September 1918 a group of conscientious objectors took advantage of a slackening in the prison regime that occurred towards the end of the war, by rebelling and refusing to undertake any work.[7] They issued a list of demands for better treatment, known as the Wakefield Manifesto.[7]

As a high-security prison, Wakefield was used to house IRA prisoners at various points in the 20th century. In some cases in the 1950s, the IRA attempted to free the prisoners, such as Cathal Goulding in 1956 (the attempt was aborted when the sirens sounded)[8] and James Andrew Mary Murphy in 1959 (who was freed).[9] During a hunger strike by Provisional IRA prisoners, Frank Stagg died in Wakefield Prison on 12 February 1976.[10] The case brought international media attention as the Irish Government denied Stagg's last request for a military funeral march from Dublin to Ballina, and instead arranged for the Irish police to bury him secretly.[11] On 1 March 1976, Merlyn Rees, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the Wilson ministry, announced that those people convicted of causing terrorist offences would no longer be entitled to Special Category Status, which was challenged during later hunger strikes.[12]

In 2001 it was announced that a new Supermax security unit was to be built at Wakefield Prison. The unit was to house the most dangerous inmates within the British prisons system, and was the first such unit of its kind to be built in the United Kingdom.[13]

In March 2004 an inspection report from Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons criticised staff at Wakefield Prison for being disrespectful to inmates. The report claimed that the prison was "over-controlled", and a third of the prison's inmates claimed to have been victimised.[14]

• Kamel Bourgass – Islamic terrorist convicted of the murder of police officer Stephen Oake and the attempted murder of two other police officers.[16]
• Ian Watkins – Former lead singer and lyricist of the band the Lostprophets, convicted of several sex offences, some involving children and infants. After a period at Wakefield transferred to Long Lartin to enable his terminally ill mother to have easier visitation rights,[17] and subsequently transferred to HM Prison Rye Hill. In August 2019 he was convicted of possession of a banned item, a mobile phone, while back at Wakefield in March 2018.[18][19]
• Mark Bridger, child molester and murderer who abducted and murdered 5-year-old April Jones.[20]
• Robert Maudsley – serial killer and cannibal.[21]
• Jack Renshaw – Neo-Nazi and child sex offender who plotted to murder Labour MP Rosie Cooper.[22]

HM Prison Wakefield, 1916

• Fred Haslam (1897-1979) – a First World War conscientious objector [23]
• Klaus Fuchs – Spy convicted of supplying information from British and American nuclear weapon research to the USSR, served nine years and four months of his fourteen-year term at Wakefield, between 1951 and 1959.
• Ian Huntley – who was convicted of the Soham double child murder, from 2004 to 2008, when he was moved to HMP Frankland.[24]
• Radislav Krstić - Bosnian Serb war criminal[25]
• Dr. Harold Shipman – Widely considered the most prolific serial killer in modern history; committed suicide at Wakefield Prison in January 2004. Shipman had been on round-the-clock suicide watch at two previous prisons, but such 'special measures' had not been deemed necessary after his transfer to Wakefield.[26]
• Michael Sams[27]
• Colin Ireland – Serial killer dubbed "The Gay Slayer" who murdered five homosexual men in a three-month span in the early 1990s; died from Pulmonary fibrosis in 2012.[28]
• Robert Black – Convicted in 1994 of murdering three young girls during the 1980s, spent many years at HMP Wakefield before he was transferred to HMP Maghaberry in Northern Ireland, where he died in 2016.[29]